


we're caught between a spark and lightning

by blackkat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Fix-It, Generation Swap, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 16:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13594410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: Flinging himself back to the distant past to stop the assassination of Hatake Kakashi, Nidaime Hokage, seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's possible Tobirama didn't quite understand what he was getting himself into.





	we're caught between a spark and lightning

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Mito asks, and Tobirama hasn’t seen her this worried since everything started to truly fall apart.

“No,” he admits, because Mito isn’t Hashirama. She’ll take it at face value and keep trying anyway, where his brother would insist on trials, tests, would volunteer to go himself despite lacking all knowledge of the necessary seals.

There's a pause, and in the dimness of the dawn forest Tobirama can see Mito's mouth pull sideways in a grimace, though she doesn’t say anything. Just nods, sharp and grim, and starts moving again, sticking close to the tree trunks where the shadows are deepest. They're far enough from the village that the light of the fires doesn’t reach here, and Tobirama is glad in a sick, churning way. They should be back there helping, fighting, anything, but—

The world trembles around them, the earth shaking hard enough that Tobirama has to catch himself on the trunk of a tree as he staggers, and he growls under his breath in impotent fury, forces himself to keep moving when all he wants is to turn around and run back to the village. Hashirama is fighting, and the only place Tobirama has ever wanted to be is at his side, but he _can't_ be. Not this time.

A small, slim hand catches his wrist, and Mito says grimly, “Only a little further.”

Their window of opportunity is closing quickly, so Tobirama certainly hopes so. Madara's hyperfocus on Hashirama will only last so long before he realizes that both Tobirama and Mito are missing from the fight, and he’ll doubtless get suspicious. And if he and Mito are going to make this work, they need _time._

Chakra sparks ahead of them, and Tobirama curses silently, twisting his hand to catch Mito's wrist in return and dragging her into the shadows of a half-fallen oak. She doesn’t even try to protest, just presses herself up against him in the meager cover of the trunk and stays grimly silent, purple eyes narrowed as she listens. Tobirama touches his hand to the oak’s bark, breathing out, and focuses.

Instantly, the world bleeds into sharp focus, darts and specks of color surrounding two bonfire-bright flares of power. Closer, almost buried under the wash of chakra, are four more signals, eerily identical. White Zetsu, combing the forest, and Tobirama blesses every lucky star he’s ever existed under that Madara wasn’t able to give them Mokuton. This war would be much harder fought if Tobirama hadn’t managed to burn the blood and flesh Madara tried to steal from Hashirama.

Mito's hand moves in his grasp, just enough to make him glance down at her, but she’s not looking at him, is focused instead on the deft, careful movements of her fingers as a seal blossoms in the air before her. The dark lines unfold, glittering darkly in the low light, and it sends out tendrils like the arms of an octopus, anchoring itself to the trees on either side of them. As Tobirama watches, an image forms on the surface of the seal, a pair of owls with moon-round faces and violet eyes, perched on a slanted branch. They flutter their wings, settling, and Mito smiles thinly in satisfaction, grabbing Tobirama and dragging him out of their hiding place at a near run. Behind them, the owls shift and hoot, covering the sound of their retreat, and Tobirama can feel the Zetsu pause, then turn to investigate.

“Reckless,” he hisses at Mito, but doesn’t try to change their course.

Mito rolls her eyes. “The lure seal will take care of them,” she says. “We would have made too much noise if we tried to do it ourselves.”

Tobirama will reluctantly concede that, though he certainly doesn’t have to like it. Hopefully the Zetsu will write it off as an old trap left in the forest, but even if they don’t, it might buy Mito and him enough time to work.

The first rays of sunlight are just breaking across the horizon when they stumble out of the thickest part of the forest, and Tobirama can't resist a glance back at the village, spread out at the feet of the mountain. There's smoke rising from many parts, and on top of the five faces of the former Hokage, one beacon of chakra is facing another, colliding and pulling apart and crashing back together.

The Shodaime’s face is almost unrecognizable, and something like horror twists in Tobirama’s gut at the sight. Uzumaki Naruto's representation being defaced feels like everything Madara is trying to accomplish finally made real. He’s not much of one for nostalgia or sentiment, but that’s one of the symbols of the village. Izuna’s face was only just added, finished after his death even though he only ruled briefly, and to have the entire mountain close to being destroyed—

He shakes it off, firmly shuts those thoughts away. Keeps running, matching Mito's blurringly swift steps as they race across the open ground towards the river. No bridge, not here, but they're shinobi and hardly need one. As the trees close over them again, Tobirama leaps, landing lightly on the choppy surface of the water, and follows Mito as she makes for a small island that splits the current. The shrine there is mossy and overgrown, half-hidden under an ancient weeping willow, but Mito doesn’t pause, ducking through the trailing branches and hurrying down the steps that open up beside the shrine.

It’s tempting to look for Hashirama again, to make sure he’s still alive and fighting, but Tobirama forces himself to keep moving, trailing Mito down the slick stairs that wind deep into the earth. Everything is wet to the touch, covered in moss, but the room the stairs end in is undamaged, the seals laid into the floors and walls still as perfect as if they were just carved.

“Thank the heavens,” Mito murmurs, and calls up a dart of fire, then flicks her fingers. The sparks separate, leaping away, and whirl out to settle in the lanterns hanging around the edges of the room. In the wan, flickering light, Mito drops to one knee, smoothing a hand over the lines of the largest seal and leaving a ripple of chakra behind. The dark inlay starts to glow as well, and Mito smiles with grim satisfaction.

“Well?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Can you make it work?”

Tobirama steps closer, frowning a little as he studies the array. It’s a little archaic, and he doesn’t recognize some of the matrices, but…it’s definitely an amplifier. Mito wasn’t mistaken about that.

“I should be able to,” he says, letting his own power bleed into the air. From above, there's an echoing explosion, audible even over the rush of the river and through the thickness of the earth, and he grimaces, raising a hand. Like ink, black lines seep across the stone, edging the amplification seal and piggybacking off of it, looping around to trace the details of their plan into the rock.

“The fact that you drew this while sleep-deprived and fresh off the battlefield makes me want to slap you,” Mito says, eyeing the whole layout skeptically, her mouth a thin, unhappy line. “If this doesn’t work…”

“ _You_ have far less to worry about than I do,” Tobirama retorts, and it’s bitter on his tongue. He definitely doesn’t want Madara to get anywhere close to Mito, but Mito isn’t the one Madara blames for Izuna's death. “Madara only wants you for the Kyuubi. If he gets his hands on _me_ , I’ll likely spend the next ten years _dreaming_ of death.”

“Do you really think I'm not aware of that?” Mito asks sharply, but the lines of her Strength of a Hundred Seal are already starting to curl across her skin, shimmering violet traced with gold. She brings her hands together in a ram seal, closing her eyes, and then crouches down, pressing one palm to the edge of the seal. “It _feels_ stable. If we had time to do tests, I might even call it clever.”

“We’ll have to content ourselves with _stupidly reckless_ ,” Tobirama says dryly, and neatly steps over the lines to position himself in the center. When he offers Mito a hand, she ignores it pointedly, rising to her feet and shaking back the wide sleeves of her uniform. Her hands shape three quick signs, and the stone around them shakes, the stairway closing itself off.

“Every second counts,” Mito says in explanation, and joins Tobirama. “Ready?”

“No,” Tobirama mutters, but he grips her hand anyway. Letting their chakra bleed together is strange, more than a little unsettling—Tobirama is a sensor, and watching the two powers mingle and twist and then slide back under their skins is eerie in a way his brain can't quite comprehend. Mito is a vast wellspring of strength, though, and she boosts Tobirama’s own flagging reserves. Like taking a whole case worth of soldier pills, and Tobirama has to grit his teeth and brace himself so that he isn’t swept under her chakra like a riptide. He’s strong on his own, but Mito is both a jinchuuriki and an Uzumaki; few people in the world can match her where sheer strength is concerned.

She’s the only reason this whole thing has a chance of working, honestly, and Tobirama is glad she isn’t nearly as sensible as most people make her out to be or she would have said no the moment he brought up the idea of time travel.

Around them, the seal shimmers, lines shifting from black to violet, the tangle of Mito's red chakra and Tobirama’s blue limning the room in purple light. Tobirama takes a breath, closing his eyes, and this is his part. Mito has the raw power, but there's simply too _much_ of it for fine control. But Tobirama has based his entire career as a ninja around refining his abilities, becoming more precise, more careful. He takes the power Mito funnels to him and guides it, as precise as a scalpel’s cut, through the gateway of the seal, and—

“Tobirama!” a mockingly sweet voice cries, loud enough that it reaches them clearly. “Tobirama, aren’t you going to stand and face me? I have so much I want to say to you.”

Tobirama doesn’t let himself falter, even with the poison-heavy weight of Madara's chakra above them. Doesn’t let himself look for Hashirama, because he might be fine but _what if he’s_ _not_ —

Mito's hand clamps down around his, makes him look at her again, and her seal is burning like someone lit a blaze behind the marks, otherworldly and bright.

One chance, Tobirama thinks, gripping her fingers in return as the light from the seal starts to swirl like a vortex. The air blurs and bleeds, sliding towards blackness, even as the stone around them cracks from above.

The very last thing Tobirama sees as he activates the final lock is Madara's face, full of gleeful fury as he plunges towards them. Then the world dissolves into the brilliance of pure chakra, and everything is gone.

 

 

The room beneath the shrine is no less wet and moss-covered eighty years into the past, and Tobirama curses under his breath as he staggers up the treacherous stairs, Mito's deadweight draped over his shoulder. Her pulse is steady, and even though her chakra is low it’s not gone, so he likely doesn’t have to worry about her health. Not unless he actually drops her, the way it feels he’s about to. It’s fine, though; thinking about Mito keeps him from focusing on Madara's presence at the shrine as they left, and what that means for Hashirama. What that means for Tōka and Hikaku and everyone else, set against Madara and fighting as hard as they could.

It could have been a clone. It could have been the result of Madara staging a distraction. And regardless, it no longer matters. They slid right through time, and if all of Tobirama’s calculations are correct, this is the day of the Nidaime’s inauguration.

He really, _truly_ hopes he’s correct.

Staggering over the lip of uneven stone on the last stair, Tobirama catches himself on the wall, then lets Mito slip down to the floor as gently as he’s able. He doesn’t have anything to lay her out on, and has no time to find something, but only a handful of people even know this shrine exists. Mito will be safe enough here, and Tobirama needs to leave.

Carefully, he arranges her with a kunai in her hand, checks her pulse one more time to make sure it’s steady, and then pushes to his feet. A touch of sensor’s sight makes the world open up, slide into focus in a way normal sight never manages, and Tobirama forces the too-fast beat of his heart to the background, fixes his attention on the burn of chakra instead. Different than the Konoha he knows—much, much smaller, with more shinobi than civilians, but the chakra beacons are even brighter. Six of them at least, and Tobirama is so used to Hashirama and Madara being the strongest by a league that it’s almost bewildering.

This world is unfamiliar, though. There's no picking out details or identifying individuals like he usually can. Tobirama has to trust that he’ll be able to spot danger better from up close, but…

All of this is starting to seem like a poorly considered idea.

With a muttered curse, Tobirama ducks out of the shrine, leaps lightly across the summer-slow river—a good sign where his calculations are concerned—and heads into the forest at a run, light-footed and silent. There's a patrol several miles south, another to the east, but the barriers Tobirama is so accustomed to aren’t present around the village itself. Logical, given that the Yondaime was the one to put them in, and Orochimaru is probably only a few years old right now. Still, it makes getting into the village easier, and Tobirama is hardly about to complain about that.

Dawn has given way to mid-morning by now, and Tobirama is intimately aware of some spectral clock counting down in his head, pushing his steps on faster and faster as he approaches Konoha. This is a madman’s plan, a last, desperate hope; two wars against Madara, and Hashirama is his equal but with all the tricks he’s learned, Madara won't fall. This last invasion will likely be the final one, and they’ve all been fighting for days, pushed right to the edge and over it. But—

Tobirama has read the books, poured over the accounts in the depths of the library when sleep was impossible with the army of White Zetsu outside of Konoha's walls. _This_ is the moment when everything started to slide into chaos, and if Tobirama can just _fix it_ he can fix everything that comes after as well.

That’s the argument that convinced Mito, in the end. They abandoned the battlefield, left Tōka and Hikaku and Hashirama to fight on their own, but if they succeed here it will have been worth it.

There's no time to try and stop at the gates, to announce himself. Tobirama avoids them instead, leaps right over the wall the second he finds a clear spot and lands lightly in the dust. It takes a precious moment to orient himself; everything is _different,_ to the point that he can hardly even recognize the village as it is. Few trees, small buildings, only one face on the looming mountain above them, even though there are clearly preparations being made for another. The only immediately recognizable landmarks are the Administration Building, dome rising high above the streets, and the hospital, equally tall and imposing. The former is what Tobirama needs—from here he can see that a crowd is gathered, that all the brightest chakra signatures are there.

The Nidaime’s appointment is already happening.

“You there! Who are you?” a woman shouts, and Tobirama jerks around, caught out in the open. A Hyuuga, he thinks. No, _the_ Hyuuga—the very first clan head to bring the Hyuuga into Konoha, her expression fierce, dressed in formal robes and clearly on her way to the inauguration. Tobirama has heard stories about Hyuuga Hanabi, but he’d never thought—well. Clearly he’d never thought to meet her, even after he conceived this plan. But he’d also certainly never considered getting _caught_ by her, which could definitely be a problem.

Still, he can't pause even for this, can't stop no matter what. The clock is counting down, and he has a few minutes at _most_ before it’s too late to fix anything.

With a muttered curse, he grabs for a three-pronged kunai, flips it up into the air and flings it at the woman as she approaches. She sidesteps it easily, hands coming up in the starting pose for the Gentle Fist style, Byakugan activating as she whirls into the first blow—

Tobirama reaches for the kunai, steps, and is gone in a flash of chakra. He reappears next to the blade, snatching it out of the air and flinging it up towards the top of the closest building. Another leaps, even as Hanabi shouts, and he’s over the roof and landing on the next building over, picking up a run. Hanabi’s chakra signal is behind him, but he can also hear her calling to other people, alerting them of an intruder. It’s a mixed blessing; harder for Tobirama to do what he needs to in the commotion, but it might make things more difficult for the assassin as well.

Or easier, he thinks with a grimace, clearing the last street before the Administration Building with a long leap. If everyone is focused on him and not on the new Nidaime—

A shadow flickers in the edge of his vision, fast-moving, keeping pace with him as it angles closer, and Tobirama hisses another curse, changes direction, and jumps for the roof of the Administration Building, sandals skidding across the dome before he gains traction. Below, on the other side, he can hear someone talking, the laughter of a crowd. Then a hush, and he urges himself faster, flings his Hiraishin kunai for that extra ounce of speed. The trailing shadow follows, resolving into a man with jet-black hair and pale skin, dark eyes narrowed as he sweeps a tantō from its sheath. The first ANBU commander, Tobirama realizes with a surge of something akin to hero worship, which he’d thought he long since overcame, but there’s no _time_.

He calls up his chakra, leaps to the kunai just as the crowd bursts into applause, and reappears on the balcony below with a flash of chakra just as a figure in red robes rises.

There's a cry, a surge of power from all sides. The man in red leaps back, and a blond man lunges forward, an Uchiha man emerging from the darkness behind them both with a sword already in hand. Tobirama doesn’t pause, doesn’t hesitate; he goes after the man in red even as the hat falls.

Hatake Kakashi, Nidaime Hokage, rises to meet him with lightning already starting to crackle around his fingertips, but Tobirama leaps right over him, lunging for the rafters. It’s a perfect chameleon jutsu, but he _knows_ this, read the accounts so many times—

A sword from empty air meets his kunai with a shower of sparks, and Tobirama flips over, kicks the assassin in the face, and drags water out of thin in the shape of a roaring dragon. The construct grabs the assassin, sweeps him right off his perch and down to the ground, and he hits hard on his back, losing his blade and his control over the jutsu at the same time. Tobirama drops down on top of him, right through the water, and shoves his kunai up against the bared throat without hesitation.

The man goes still, hands opening in a clear sign of surrender, and Tobirama’s dragon shatters, whirling back into chakra and moisture with a hiss.

He’s breathing hard, Tobirama realizes, and it’s almost surprising. Not a powerful opponent—good at stealth and sneak attacks and avoiding Konoha's famed dojutsu but little else—but…

It’s done. The Nidaime is alive.

Everything is silent when Tobirama lifts his head. He glances at the blond man, watching him with careful eyes, the Uchiha with one Rinnegan who still has his sword bared. The pink-haired woman standing ready, expression hostile, fists bared. Of all of them, Kakashi looks the most at ease, expression amused even as he shakes sparks from his fingertips.

“Maa,” the Nidaime says. “That was certainly more exciting than your appointment, sensei.”

The blond man laughs, bright and warm. _Uzumaki Naruto_ , Tobirama thinks, with a frisson of pure awe. Gods, he’s standing in front of the _Shodaime_ , the man who built Konoha. Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke—this is _their_ village, in a way it can never be anyone else’s.

“You’re right,” Naruto agrees cheerfully. The rippling current of chakra around him fades, and suddenly it’s a hundred times easier to breathe. Tobirama takes a careful breath, trying not to think about the sheer weight of it, and meets those blue eyes squarely as settle on him. “I guess we should thank you for saving our student.”

Tobirama swallows, looks down at the assassin because it seems safer. “It’s my duty,” he says, and it comes out stiff and more than a little awkward. “As a Konoha shinobi.”

“Konoha?” Sakura asks sharply, folding her arms over her chest. Her gaze flickers across Tobirama’s happuri faceguard, marked with Konoha's leaf, and then down over his flak jacket and ANBU armor. “You're not from the village, I would know.”

Sasuke, still halfway in the shadows with his sword ready, makes a quiet sound of agreement, his gaze never wavering.

“Not yet,” Tobirama says, and hesitates. “Not anymore,” he corrects, and that feels more right, comes with a pang of grief that he won't let turn into regret. “In my timeline, the Nidaime died today.”

Naruto stiffens, expression hardening faintly as he looks down at the assassin, and Sakura sucks in a sharp breath. Sasuke, though, looks at Tobirama, and his expression is still entirely unreadable. “Time travel,” he says, more a fact than a question.

Tobirama inclines his head. “The Kyuubi jinchuuriki from my time helped provide power, and I redesigned an old Uzumaki seal.”

With a light thump of sandals, the ANBU commander drops onto the balcony, and asks, “Hokage-sama?”

“Take him away,” Kakashi and Naruto say at the same time, and then stop short and look at each other.

After a long moment, Kakashi rolls his visible eye and says, “The assassin should go to T & I.”

Sakura makes a sound of amusement, and she’s the first to step forward, offering Tobirama her hand. “Ino will be happy about that,” she says. “She’s been complaining that it’s too boring lately.” Her grip is impressively strong as she pulls Tobirama to his feet, and then asks, “Your friend?”

Tobirama hesitates, because this is the extent of his plan. With this change, the timeline will have rearranged itself, so there's no way to go back to their own time. This is what’s left, and if it keeps Madara sane, Hashirama and Izuna alive, Tobirama is glad to have done it. It’s just…going to take some getting used to.

Something must show on his face, because Sakura touches his shoulder lightly, and says, “Let us help.”

It’s…a little bewildering that they _want_ to. When Tobirama allowed himself to think of consequences, he expected to end up dead or in T  & I alongside the assassin.

“She’s in the old Uzumaki shrine,” he manages, through a throat that feels thicker than it should. “In the middle of the Naka River.”

Sakura smiles at him. “I’ll go retrieve her myself,” she promises.

“Old?” Naruto sounds offended. “I just built that last year!”

Sasuke rolls his eyes. “Old to _him_ , dobe,” he says, and slides his sword away, a thousand times more trusting than Tobirama would have expected of a man with his reputation. “You have him, Sai?”

“Of course,” the ANBU commander says, smiling as he heaves the assassin upright. Well, Tobirama is fairly certain it’s supposed to be a smile. “Are you and Dickless going to go celebrate being retired now?”

“ _Sai_.” Naruto flushes, opens his mouth—

“And that’s my cue,” Kakashi says lightly, taking Tobirama by the elbow and stepping back. He flashes a wave over the balcony railing that’s actually a hand-sign, and then turns towards the office, pulling Tobirama with him.

Tobirama goes with it, largely because he doesn’t _think_ there's another assassin but it’s always better to check. Not that the new Nidaime is unprotected; he can see a pair of masked figures land outside the window and separate, the brown-haired man sliding around towards the stairs leading down into the building and the black-haired man taking up a post at the edge of the door.

“So you time-traveled just to save my life? I'm honored,” Kakashi says lightly, making a joke out of it, but his grip is gentle as he guides Tobirama down into a chair.

Tobirama hesitates, looking up at the man. Slanted hitai-ate, mask, dark grey eye faintly crinkled like he’s smiling. It’s not like the few quick sketches of him in the history books, and somehow that feels…better. There are four living legends on the balcony outside, talking and bickering like normal people but with an edge of greatness behind them, and Tobirama has never, ever been one for awe but…these people deserve it. They created Konoha from nothing.

Kakashi, though, is potential still unrealized. His death during his inauguration threw Konoha into chaos, opened the village up to the first Shinobi World War. What Tobirama knows about Kakashi is more the ripples that resulted from his death, rather than what the man himself accomplished.

“My Konoha was under attack,” he says, and tips his chin up, daring Kakashi to make light of that. “Your death didn’t cause it directly, but it destabilized Konoha, and when Kumo started a war Konoha was still reeling. Konoha won, but…at a cost.”

Kakashi is watching him closely, even as he takes a seat on the edge of the desk. His eye flickers down, taking in Tobirama’s battle-worn clothes, the sword at his side, the handful of remaining kunai in his weapons pouch. “The fighting never stopped, did it,” he murmurs, and it’s not a question.

“No,” Tobirama answers anyway. He rubs a hand over his face, almost knocking his faceguard askew, and grimaces. “The Daimyo ended up appointing a Sandaime when the Shodaime was killed in the fighting.” He pretends not to hear the sharply indrawn breath at that, doesn’t acknowledge the way Kakashi glances over at his teachers still arguing on the balcony. Easy enough to remember the death of his own teacher, still an open wound; Kagami was everything to him, and he, Tōka, and Izuna had lost him so suddenly. There was no time to grieve afterwards, either. Not when Izuna was killed shortly afterwards and Madara blamed all of them for his older brother’s death.

“There's no saying that my rule will stop anything that happened once,” Kakashi says, almost gently.

Tobirama grits his teeth. “It _has_ to,” he insists, and it’s only partly blind faith and stubbornness. “I traced the ripples back. I spent _weeks_ looking for the point where things changed. This will fix things, I'm _sure_. You’ll keep the wars from happening.”

There's a long pause, and then Kakashi hums lightly. “You,” he announces, like he’s just hit upon some great revelation, “are _cute_.”

Tobirama splutters, caught entirely off guard. “ _What_?” he demands, absolutely sure he heard the man wrong.

“Cute,” Kakashi repeats cheerfully, leaning into Tobirama’s personal space and beaming at him. “You have so much faith and you're as stubborn as a mule. It’s adorable.”

“It is not!” Tobirama protests, but his cheeks are hot, and with his complexion he’s never been able to hide a blush. “And I am not some hopeful fool, this is all _logical_ —”

“Cu~te,” Kakashi sing-songs, and reaches out to ruffle Tobirama’s hair. “You're seventeen? Eighteen?”

“Nineteen,” Tobirama snaps, knocking his hand away, and his chakra slips past his annoyance and escapes his control, rattling the pens on the desk. “I am _not cute_ —”

Kakashi catches a pen as it makes to roll off the desk. “My white knight,” he declares. “Who crossed unsurmountable barriers like time and space to save my life—”

“Time and space are not _unsurmountable_ , that’s why time-space ninjutsu _exists_ ,” Tobirama corrects crankily. This is like Kagami at his _worst_ , insisting his students were the cutest things he’d ever seen, and Tobirama is massively offended that he _still_ hasn’t escaped it.

He might as well not even have spoken with the way Kakashi breezes right past that. “—and arrived at the very last moment like a hero. How dashing. It’s like something out of a novel.”

“A _terrible_ novel,” Tobirama mutters grumpily, crossing his arms and leveling the Hokage with an unimpressed glare. It’s probably not as impressive as it could be, given how red his face feels.

“A _romance_ novel,” Kakashi insists cheerfully, and Tobirama groans, pinching the bridge of his nose and reminding himself that this is entirely worth it, that he saved the world and he really doesn’t want to go back to his war-torn village just to get away from the _idiocy_.

Not that going back would help. Hashirama is there, and he is absolutely just as bad. Tobirama needs to remember that.

There's a quiet chuckle, and a hand catches Tobirama’s fingers, tugging them away from his face. “Thank you,” Kakashi says, and when Tobirama opens his eyes the Nidaime is smiling. “You saved my life, and it sounds like you saved my village as well.”

“Our village,” Tobirama corrects, but he can feel his embarrassment fading, replaced by something that might just be relief. He knows what's coming. He can help, here and now, and believe that at some point his generation will be born again, into a better world. That’s all he needs to know.

The spark of mischief in Kakashi’s face is Tobirama’s only warning before Kakashi lifts Tobirama’s hand to his lips and presses a loud, showy kiss to the back of it, even through his mask. Tobirama yelps like he’s been stung, and Kakashi giggles, wicked and amused.

“My prince,” he says cheerfully. “That’s what you're going to answer to now.”

Strangling the new Hokage seems counterproductive, so Tobirama contents himself with calling up a wave of water and knocking him right off his desk as he laughs.


End file.
